vertical feet

Sandpoint, ID – Schweitzer Mountain didn’t sleep the night of Friday, January 30th. The Selkirk stars laid witness to an order of skiers and snowboarders, braving the bitter-cold, raging winds, weakening knees, and breathless lungs as they trusted in the strength of their hamstrings and their hearts to carry them on a 24-hour odyssey for a cure.

The topsy-turvy world of Le Massif, Quebec, and how Cirque de Soleil's cofounder sees it as his next creative challenge.

It’s not every day you see a skier on stilts, but exceptions are increasingly the rule at Le Massif, Quebec, a refreshingly unusual resort just downstream from Quebec City on the left bank of the St. Lawrence River. Long renowned for its upside-down layout—you park at the top, where the main lodge is, then ski down some 2,500 vertical feet toward the river—Le Massif is poised to turn the entire resort experience upside down.

In Vermont’s remote, lovely Northeast Kingdom, resort developers have big plans for a quiet little town and its long-slumbering ski area.

“This is it?” That was my first thought upon arriving at Burke as a teenager for a ski race some 25 years ago. That phrase became a refrain as I hiked the slalom course next to the small, broken-down, Poma and sought refuge from the New England cold in the bare-bones Mid-Burke Lodge. Knowing Burke Academy’s reputation for churning out Olympians, I was shocked that so humble an operation had such stature. Of course, like many youngsters, I wasn’t looking very far beyond my own ski tips.

Tony Cammarata knows this terrain as well as anyone. As assistant director of the ski patrol at Arapahoe Basin, he spent much of summer 2007 hiking in A-Basin’s newly opened Montezuma Bowl, placing ropes and signs and scouting the terrain. But as he and I prepare to dive into the dense trees on the bowl’s lower flanks, Cammarata stops and squints at the woods ahead. “Let’s see if we can find the gate for Lightning Trees,” he says, scratching his goatee and looking lost.

Shouldn’t the assistant director of the ski patrol know how to find Lightning Trees?

Do you want a village that feels intimate and embracing at the foot of expansive yet seamlessly interconnected slopes? Is convenience king for you? If you answered yes, then go here.

Giant ski areas - the largest in the world - are a hallmark of French skiing. These sprawling arenas of interconnected lifts, runs and resort centers are so vast that even the brawniest North American resorts look Lilliputian in comparison. (Imagine six Whistler Blackcombs tethered together.) With the comparatively modest 24,000 contiguous skiable acres of Espace Killy out its back door, Val d'Isère is hardly the largest of the French megaresorts (a mere three Whistler Blackcombs).